


Wouldn't It Be Awesome

by trixie



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 13:47:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2775266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trixie/pseuds/trixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon and Spencer take a day off from recording to go surfing.  Set post-divorce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wouldn't It Be Awesome

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and [posted](http://popoffacork.livejournal.com/15497.html) on LJ as part of Pop Off a Cork Bandom Story Swap in September 2009. Written for maple_mahogany.

Spencer wakes up to the faint sound of a piano, the same five or six notes played over and over, with slight variations each time in order and tempo. He rubs at his eyes and looks over at the clock on his bedside table, then groans. He lays there for a few minutes, trying to will himself back to sleep, but he can't block out the piano and when the notes are suddenly punctuated by the discordant sound of a hand mashing down a bunch of random keys in frustration, he sighs and gets up.  
  
  
Brendon's started on a slightly different set of six notes by the time Spencer shuffles through the door of the music room. "Fuck," Brendon says, looking up with a crease between his eyebrows. "Did I wake you up? I should have gone with the keyboard and headphones, sorry." 

  
"We have the day off, why are you awake?" 

  
Brendon shrugs and absently plays the line Spencer woke up to. "Woke up and couldn't fall back to sleep. Figured I could work on something." 

  
Spencer takes inventory of the room, the soda bottles and coffee cups, scattered staff paper and twenty other kinds of paper that he and Brendon have been jotting ideas down on, laptops, guitars, and keyboard. Brendon is sitting in the middle of it in his boxers and an old long-sleeve t-shirt that Spencer is pretty sure once belonged to Shane, his hair flat on one side and sticking up on the other. He's got one leg tucked under himself on the piano bench, his other foot curled around a leg of the bench, and he looks younger than Spencer's seen him look in a long time. There's something about the way he's holding himself, the way he looks simultaneously exhausted and bursting at the seams with energy, that reminds Spencer of the first year he knew Brendon. It's all wrong. 

  
They've got more than half an album done, eight complete songs that they both really love, three more songs that they like but don't love, and four more songs that are in some stage of works in progress. They just put the finishing touches on two songs with Mark, they're going into the studio next week with Rob, and Patrick's coming by this weekend to listen to some stuff. They're actually well ahead of schedule right now. But the past few days Brendon's been like this--tense and twitchy and way harder on his own writing than usual. Spencer knows it has something to do with the unlabeled cd that's been sitting on the coffee table untouched since Brendon popped it out of the stereo and tossed it there three days ago. He just doesn't know what to do about it. 

  
"Hey, lets get the fuck out of here today," he finally says, leaning up against the piano and pushing a stack of paper away from himself, refusing to even look at it. "Get away from this shit. We haven't been to the beach in weeks, dude." 

  
"Yeah?" Brendon perks up and looks interested at the mention of the beach. "I looked at the forecast last night and there's good stuff down in Encinitas. You feel like traveling?" 

  
"Fuck, yeah. Let's do it."  
  
  
***  
  
  
They end up at Swami's beach, which is moderately crowded for a weekday, but it's a perfect Indian Summer day and surf conditions are ideal, so it's not unexpected. They haul their boards and gear down the wooden steps, wax up, and hit the water right away. 

  
Spencer is not a particularly good surfer. He can get himself upright about two-thirds of the time, but he spends just as much time in the water as on the board and he's mostly just fine with that. Brendon is much better at it, and just like most musical instruments he's ever picked up, he was good at it almost the first time he tried it and has only gotten better. It helps that he's perfectly built for surfing with his short legs and long torso, lower center of gravity, but he's also just Brendon. And Brendon is Good at Things. Spencer loves that about him, even when it sometimes used to annoy the shit out of Ryan. 

  
They spend a lot of time sitting out in the water waiting for their turn at the waves, but it's nice. There's something really comfortable about sitting out in the middle of the water, straddling his board, and chatting about Shane's endless script revisions or the most recent Cab drama or laughing at the way Pete has taken to being a stay-at-home dad. Every once in a while, he stretches out and hooks his ankle around Brendon's to keep them from drifting apart and when they get an opening they take it. Spencer manages three really good runs and two wipe-outs, which is a pretty decent ratio for him. On his sixth try, he executes a near-perfect pop-up and drops in to the wave just right and he's ecstatic, because it's probably the biggest one he's ever managed to catch. He looks over and Brendon's about 20 feet away, grinning and giving him a thumbs up. Spencer's not entirely sure what happens next, but for a few seconds he's pretty sure he's air-borne, then the nose of his board is taking a pearl and he's going ass-over-nose into the water. Something slams into him and he's thrown around several times and loses his bearings, until someone grabs him and starts yanking him towards the shore. 

  
Spencer gets his feet under him and stumbles out of the water, coughing and trying to catch his breath. He pukes up all the sea water that he swallowed and takes several heaving breaths, before he can even register Brendon's hand rubbing his back and voice tense in his ear. 

  
"Jesus fucking Christ, are you okay? What the fuck, man, you were there one minute and then you weren't and you're fucking feet came up and Jesus, Spencer, it should have been hilarious but I saw the fucking board hit you and..." Brendon's hand moves from Spencer's back to his head, pushing gently at the wet hair hanging in Spencer's face. "You better not have a fucking concussion you fuckhead." 

  
Spencer straightens up and turns to look at Brendon. "It didn't…" he tries to talk, but his throat is burning and it just makes him cough more. A bottle of water appears in front of him and he notices for the first time that there are several other people standing around him, including a lifeguard, who's offering him the bottle. 

  
"Thanks, dude," Brendon says, taking the bottle from him and handing it to Spencer as if Spencer weren't capable of taking it himself, and it makes Spencer grin. He takes a few gulps, spits into the sand and tries again. 

  
"It didn't hit me in the head." Now that he can breathe again, he can feel exactly where the board hit him, across his shoulder and upper part of his chest. He tries to moves his arm, rotates his shoulder around with a grimace and is happy that while it hurts like fuck, nothing feels broken. Brendon's watching him closely, his eyes widening when he realizes it's Spencer's shoulder and then narrowing as soon as it becomes obvious that there's not serious damage. 

  
Brendon smacks him on the other shoulder. "If you break your fucking arm and can't play, I'll fucking kill you myself." 

  
"I'm touched by your concern." 

  
Brendon nods, his face suddenly mock-serious. "I have a very big heart. You're lucky you know me." He can't hold the serious face long though, and he grins, making Spencer laugh. 

  
"Looks like you're okay," the lifeguard breaks in, "but you mind coming up and letting me check you out to be sure?" 

  
Spencer starts to object, but Brendon says, "yes!" and is leaning down to pull the leash off Spencer's ankle and gathering up both boards before he can do anything else. Back at the lifeguard stand, Kevin (as he introduces himself) pokes and prods at the already forming bruise on Spencer's chest, manually moves his arm around, and then shines a pen-light into his eyes "just to be safe," before giving him the all-clear. 

  
Once he's been convinced that Spencer is perfectly fine, Brendon heads back out into the water while Spencer trades his wetsuit for shorts and treks back up the bluff to grab his camera. He spends the next two hours taking pictures of surfers and sky and beach. He's still learning when it comes to the professional camera that Shane helped him pick out, but by the time he's filled up an entire memory stick, he thinks he has about 20 really good shots, including some awesome pictures of Brendon on his board. When Brendon hauls himself in and drops both his board and himself onto the sand with a sigh and a "holy shit, I'm worn out," Spencer is positive this trip was the right thing to do. 

  
The thing is, three days ago, Jon came by to say hi and he dropped off a pre-release copy of the debut _Young Veins_ album. When Jon left, Spencer had said, "maybe we should wait." But Brendon had just rolled his eyes and grabbed the disk out of Spencer's hand and put it in the stereo. He'd laid down in the middle of the living room floor with Bogart and closed his eyes before pressing play. And it was good. A lot of it wasn't really a surprise, because Spencer and Brendon had been around when Jon and Ryan were working on a lot of those songs. They'd been written on tour buses and in hotel rooms and during bonfires in Ryan's backyard. But they were also now complete and polished and made a coherent whole that was definitely an album Spencer would want to own. An album that the critics might even like. It actually sounded exactly like an album that Jon and Ryan would want to make, and that was both bittersweet and kind of awesome. 

  
When the last notes faded, Brendon had opened his eyes and looked up at Spencer with a completely unreadable look and had just said, "It's really good, isn't it?" 

  
"Yeah," Spencer had nodded and smiled, because he was kind of surprisingly happy for Ryan and Jon and he was also really happy for himself. "It's awesome." 

  
Brendon smiled back, but it was his interview smile, not his real one, and he never made eye contact. "Good for them," he said and got up, popped the cd out and tossed it onto the coffee table. "Ryan was right, they didn't need us." 

  
"Bren." Spencer had gotten up and followed him down the hallway. 

  
He'd gotten to the music room door and stopped, taken a deep breath and then turned around to finally make eye contact with Spencer. "No, it's good. I'm really happy for them. Just. We need to get back to work on ours." 

  
With that he'd walked away, sat down at his laptop and put his headphones on. When Spencer called Ryan to tell him how much he loved the album, the very carefully casual way Ryan asked about Brendon's opinion almost made Spencer laugh out loud. So Spencer hadn't tried to push it and he hadn't brought the subject up since, partly because the whole point of this split for him was to not be caught between Brendon and Ryan and their issues anymore, and partly because he figured Brendon was right and the best thing to do was to make their own awesome album. He'd let it go and late that night Brendon had written on his Twitter: _Just got a sneak peak at a Young band's debut album. You guys are gonna be blown away! I know I was._

  
And that was, among other things, Brendon's way of saying he was okay, but the next few days of recording hadn't done anything to convince Spencer it was true. Now he was sitting in the sun, grinning over at Spencer and looking more comfortable and happy in his own skin than he had in days. And that was a very good sign. 

  
*** 

  
They get dinner at a little taco stand not far from the beach and sit down at a picnic table to stuff their faces. The autumn sun is getting low in the sky, a breeze is picking up, and the air's starting to cool off. Brendon's nose is a little pink from the sun, but Spencer knows it will be brown by tomorrow. He's grinning around his food and telling Spencer a story about a castle that he and Kyla built in his mom's garden one summer when he was eight and how much trouble they'd been in when his mom had come home and found the contents of her jewelry box decorating the rosebushes. 

  
"Oh my god, Spence," Brendon stops in the middle of his own story and groans, "this is seriously the best tamale I've ever eaten." 

  
"Ever?" 

  
"Ever. Anywhere." Brendon squints against the sun setting behind Spencer and offers up half of his last tamale. "Seriously, try it. It's like blowjob good." 

  
Spencer is skeptical, but he takes the tamale anyway, because the Blowjob Scale of Good is very scientific and sacred. "Amazing head, good head, or bad head?" 

  
"Somewhere between mediocre head and good head. Seriously, try it." 

  
He bites into the offered tamale and is pleasantly surprised, because it's not mealy like a lot of tamales he's had, but spicy and savory and okay, Brendon might be right. Brendon grins at him smugly when Spencer finishes off the half-tamale in two bites and takes the opportunity to steal one of Spencer's fish tacos. "Hey!" 

  
"Sharing is caring, Smith." 

  
Spencer mock-snarls and steals some chips from Brendon's plate. "So how much trouble were you in when your mom found the jewelry?" 

  
"Oh shit. She freaked, and I was totally convinced she was going to like, turn green and bust out of her clothes like the fucking Hulk, right? Of course, I ended up getting in way more trouble than Kyla, mostly because Kyla cried and got apologetic, but I was just righteously pissed off that mom was failing to recognize our artistic genius." 

  
Spencer laughs, because that's such a typical fucking Brendon Urie reaction to being in trouble. "How did your parents not kill you, seriously?" 

  
Brendon rolls his eyes. "Oh, whatever, Mr. Ryan-and-I-use-to-blow-things-up-for-fun. Anyway, we had to clean the whole thing up and give up our saved allowances to buy new hollyhocks to replace the ones we'd trampled. She made me sit and clean all her jewelry by hand, which was actually kind of fun, because she had some neat stuff and we were mostly never allowed to touch that shit, you know?" 

  
Spencer nods, but he doesn't really know, because there was really nothing off limits in his house growing up and he's pretty sure that if he'd been interested, his mom would have sat down with him and let him play with her jewelry all he wanted. After all, she'd only been amused when he and Ryan had gotten into her make-up when they were 12. 

  
"The whole thing would have blown over, really, except that somehow we managed to lose one of her pearl earrings. Kyla and I, and then mom and dad, tore the whole garden up looking for that damn earring and never found it. It wasn't even all that nice or anything, not worth very much or whatever, but my dad had brought them back from Japan and given them to her for their first Christmas. I felt so fucking bad about that for years." 

  
"Wait, wait, is that why you bought those ridiculously expensive earrings in Indonesia?" 

  
Brendon grins and nods. "Yeah, I mean, it's not the same, obviously, but she loved them. I think that's my favorite gift I've gotten for anyone since I could afford stuff, you know?" 

  
"Yeah." Spencer remembers how cool it felt to give Crystal and Jackie a graduation trip to Bermuda this summer. 

  
"How come you never told me that story before?" 

  
Brendon shrugs and finishes off his stolen fish taco, pushing his empty plate away. "I forgot about it for a long time, you know? And then we went to that crazy fucking place where they had all that pearl jewelry and I remembered and I knew I had to get her something. I probably would have told you about it, but everyone was in a big hurry and I guess I just never got a chance." 

  
And Spencer remembers now. He remembers that day and how Brendon was still kind of green from the near heatstroke he'd gotten on stage the day before. He'd been exhausted and had dark circles under his eyes, and he and Ryan had already gotten in an argument that morning about ideas for the next record. But Brendon had followed Ryan around on his shopping extravaganza and seemed mostly uninterested until they'd found that pearl market. Spencer remembers now that he'd perked up and spent the next two hours intently browsing every fucking piece of jewelry in the place before picking something. Ryan had bought a necklace for Keltie and then become increasingly annoyed at how long Brendon was taking. By the time they left there, Ryan had taken Jon to find a bar somewhere with Zack, and Spencer had put Brendon in a cab back to the hotel before going off to wander through an old temple by himself. He forgets sometimes how tired the tension between Ryan and Brendon use to make him. 

  
"I gotta take a piss," Brendon says, standing up and pointing back up at the food stands. "You want anything while I'm up there?" 

  
"More lemonade?" 

  
"Sure thing." 

  
Spencer watches Brendon walk back up the little hill and across the parking lot. The sun is finally starting to sink below the horizon and it's gorgeous, so Spencer grabs his i-phone and walks around to the other side of the table. He squats down a little and takes a picture of the table with the remnants of their dinner and the sunset in the background. He sends the picture to Twitter and writes: _Having awesome day off. Wish you were here._

  
He gathers up their garbage and gets rid of it, then stretches out on the bench, closes his eyes and basks in the last few rays of sun on his face. He doesn't know how long he sits there, but he's surprised when the table is jostled and he opens his eyes to see Brendon standing over him with a grin and two ice-cream cones. 

  
"No lemonade, but I am the bringer of dessert. Cinnamon or Dulce de Leche, choose or lose." He holds out both cones and Spencer takes the Dulce de Leche and Brendon grins because he is completely predictable. "What were you just humming?" 

  
"Huh?" 

  
"You were humming in your little trance there, what was it?" 

  
"Oh, um." Spencer hadn't even realized he was humming, but when he thinks about it he realizes that he had the tune Brendon had been working on that morning in his head, but it was slightly different. "Something like what you were playing this morning?" 

  
"Do it again." Brendon motions impatiently with the hand holding his cone and Spencer is afraid he's about to end up with ice cream in his lap. He thinks about it for a minute and tries to hum it again. Brendon makes him repeat it several times and hums along with him, nodding enthusiastically. "That's it! That's what the fucking line needed." 

  
Spencer grins back at him. "I like it. It's for that batcave song, right?" 

  
"Yeah. For the verses, I think, which still have no actual lyrics." 

  
Brendon makes Spencer hum it with him one more time, recording it with his i-phone, so he won't forget it. They sit and finish their ice cream in silence until the sky is dark, and Spencer decides maybe it's time to broach the subject. 

  
"You know it's not a competition, right?" 

  
"What?" 

  
"Their album and our album. It's not a fucking competition." 

  
Brendon shrugs and looks away. "Maybe it's not, but that doesn't mean that every single review of either album won't compare us. And it doesn't mean that people won't say we need Ryan to write our lyrics or that..." 

  
"Brendon. Fuck that shit, man. They've always said shit about us and they will always say shit about us. And you know they're also going to be saying that Ryan's voice sucks or that their music is too derivative or whatever. So, let them." 

  
"It's not that easy, Spencer." 

  
"Yes, it is. It is that easy if you let it be. I fucking love the songs we're doing. They're good. Your stuff is good. And it's going to be so much fun to play live." He stands up and paces away, suddenly angry. "Who cares if fucking Pitchfork or someplace thinks we're brilliant. We said we didn't care about that stuff, remember? That's what you said. We said we just want to write music that we like and that's fun to play. And I'm fucking proud of our stuff. Don't fucking..." He turns back to look at Brendon and stops. "Are you laughing at me?" 

  
He is. Brendon is sitting on the table, grinning like an idiot at Spencer, one hand over his own mouth. 

  
"What the fuck?!" 

  
"I'm sorry." Brendon hops off the table and walks over to Spencer, still grinning. "I'm sorry for laughing, I just. I'm really fucking glad I'm in a band with you. I love our songs too, I do." 

  
"Then what the fuck is your problem, Bren? You've been walking around like Ryan just bested you in some fucking game and you have to find a way to beat the next level." 

  
"I know, I know. Look, I... I can't just get rid of my issues over night. I'm kind of fucked up, in case you hadn't noticed. But." He moves forward, wrapping both hands around Spencer's shoulders and looking at him seriously. "I'm a lot less fucked up than I was a year ago. I'm having fun making music again, and that's. Well, that's fucking everything, dude." 

  
"Yeah?" 

  
"Yeah. Yes." He nods and moves closer, right into Spencer's body and wraps one arm around him. 

  
Spencer's expecting a hug and goes to hug him back, but Brendon lifts up on his toes and kisses him instead. And wow, okay. It's not the first time they've ever kissed, but it's been years and it's different. It feels different than a couple of teenagers messing around. It feels exactly like what it is, kissing his best friend, his best friend that he definitely likes more than is entirely encompassed by the word "friend". 

  
"Is this okay?" Brendon asks, pulling away just a little, looking at Spencer worriedly. 

  
"Totally okay." He pulls Brendon back in, taking control of the kiss, deepening it. 

  
When they finally pull apart, Brendon mock swoons and says in a breathy voice, "Oh, Moondoggie." 

  
Spencer laughs and pushes Brendon away. "Shut up, jerk." 

  
Brendon laughs loud and full, throwing his head back, and Spencer stands there and grins at him like an idiot until he grabs Spencer's hand and starts pulling him toward the parking lot. "Come on, let's go home." 

  
As they're walking up the hill, something occurs to Spencer. "Hey, did you just make yourself Gidget in this scenario?" 

  
"No!" 

  
"You totally did." 

  
"Shut up and take me home, asshole. I promise you I give better head than Gidget ever did." 

  
"Well, when you put it that way."


End file.
